


Upside Down and Inside Out

by escritoireazul



Category: Emelan - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Acrobatics, Chromatic Yuletide, Families of Choice, Gen, POV Character of Color, POV Female Character, Slice of Life, Yuletide 2012
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-18
Updated: 2012-12-18
Packaged: 2017-11-21 10:51:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/596891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/escritoireazul/pseuds/escritoireazul
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As Willow Moon waned, Lark taught them all to do handstands. (Sandry's Book)</p>
<p>Daja learns and lives and learns to live.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Upside Down and Inside Out

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thankyouturtle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thankyouturtle/gifts).



Daja stands alone on the wall surrounding Winding Circle. The wind is off the ocean, cool and damp, heavy with the scent of brine. She breathes in deep, letting it settle in her lungs. She grips her staff in both hands, the ebony warm between her palms, careful to keep her eyes away from the plain brass caps. Once, hers had been marked, dancing monkeys and the wire spiral of a brand-new crew member, ready for her story to be etched into the metal. That one is gone, like so many people she’s loved, lost deep beneath the waves, taken by the storm and the sea.

She leans forward, pressing her legs against the stone, and squeezed her eyes shut. For a moment, salty wet wind in her face, balance just a little off, she could have been home.

*

“Try keeping your hands down this time,” Lark suggests. “Drop your hands and kick up. That will give you more speed.” Daja frowns, grumpy and sore, but tries again. This time, like every time before, she gets partway up before her body buckles and she topples sideways. At least she’s learned to tuck her chin to her chest to protect her neck. It doesn’t really hurt when she hits the soft grass, but her body’s tired, and she’s had enough of trying and failing.

Lark makes it look easy, flipping up onto her hands, her body a perfect straight line, pointed toes all the way down to her wrists. Of course it’s easy for her. She makes it look fun, too, walking on her hands, flipping back to her feet with a grin and a flourish. They’re relaxing after the midday meal when she offers to teach them handstands. 

Sandry’s eager to learn, Tris reluctant, Briar somewhere in between. Daja follows them outside, because she thinks it will be funny. Maybe fun. Maybe she’s a little curious herself.

Maybe she’s a little lonely.

“How are we to do this in skirts?” Tris asks, voice waspish. “They’ll just fall down.”

“Leave off the skirts for something more practical,” Briar suggests. He tugs on one of her curls, dancing back out of the way when she whirls on him, light on his feet. “You can’t be comfortable in this heat.”

“It wouldn’t be proper.” She presses her lips together and her eyes flash. There’s no lightning in her bronze curls, she’s not that upset, but an entire storm of it in her expression.

“No matter.” Lark gentles them. She always does. Daja isn’t sure how to take that sometimes, so much softness like the touch of expensive cloth, so different from the weathered strength of her family. So similar, too, just a different type of comfort. “Knot your skirts like this.” Tris and Sandry both follow her lead, and then Lark sets about teaching them handstands.

It’s no surprise that Briar gets it almost immediately. Not on his first try, not quite, but he’s upright by the second and perfectly straight by the third. He wobbles a little, but he stays up, grinning wide and bright. She’s never seen him smile like that unless he’s surrounded by plants.

(Well, they are surrounded by plants, grass beneath their feet – and hands – trees nearby, flowers by the cottage. But it’s not the same, not when she most often sees him smile when his fingers are in the dirt.)

Sandry figures it out pretty quick too, lifting her arms up, hands over her head, and then falling forward, kicking her legs upright. Lark has to catch her at first, helping hold her upright, but soon enough, Sandry can do it on her own. The first time she gets it, Lark’s hands out but unneeded, Sandry holds it for a breath, maybe two, then drops her feet back down. When her head comes up, her cheeks are flushed and she’s grinning.

Tris watches them, frowning, taking in Briar’s success and then Sandry’s, and Daja’s failure time and time again, but shakes her head when Lark offers to spot her.

Even with Lark’s help, her strong, steady hands, Daja can’t work it out. At first she can’t get high enough, her legs stuck each time halfway between ground and sky. If she kicks off harder, throwing herself toward the ground, she goes too far, flying past center, toppling over onto her back.

(Lark stops them then, and takes the time to teach everyone how to properly fall, and then how to turn the handstand into a somersault, spinning feet over head over feet fast and smooth along the ground.)

When it’s time for their lessons, Daja still hasn’t managed a handstand on her own. She brushes dirt from the red band on her arm, frowning.

“We’ll try again,” Lark promises, putting her arm across Daja’s shoulders.

“There’s just so much more of you to balance.” Sandry shakes her skirts and the wrinkles from the knot fall away. “You’ll manage it. It’s fun.” She smiles and leans closer, encouraging.

“Yes, falling into the dirt, of course that is fun.” But Daja smiles back. They are friends. Sandry means well. “Lark’s taller than me, and she does it. I will too.”

Daja plants her staff firmly with each step as she heads to the forge and to Frostpine, covering the plain brass cap with the dust she kicks up. She puts thoughts of failures and falling far from her mind, and the strange emptiness that lingers no matter how many minutes this place feels like it might become a home some months in the future, if she allows it.

*

The days are long. Daja goes off by herself in their evening free time after lessons. She sets her staff to the side, not quite ready to leave it in her room even though she has no plans to stray far from Discipline’s door. It is where she sleeps and eats, and it is safer for her here than elsewhere among the kaqs, but it is not home.

(Not _yet_ , but she is not ready to give that much thought. Better to focus on trying and falling and rising again.)

It’s not quite dark, that dusky time when the air starts to cool a little. She stretches, feeling the pull from the work she’s done lifting metal and carrying coal and keeping the fire hot enough, and from landing on her back and her hip so often earlier.

She takes a breath, lets it out slow, almost a sigh, and bends to more practice, kicking her feet up again and again, until she goes too far and topples all the way over. For a moment, she lies flat on her back and tries to catch her breath.

“I can spot you,” Tris says, and Daja comes up fast, breathing hard. Her staff is out of reach, but even as she stands, panting, sore all over, her body is already relaxing. She knows Tris’s voice, it just takes a moment.

(Someday, maybe she will fully relax here, in this place that could be a home, but that day is not today.)

“Sneaking about,” Daja says, and her voice is sharp. How could she have missed Tris’s approach? She isn’t quiet, she doesn’t try to hide. Her thoughts are often loud. She is a merchant, and Daja Trader (or she was, and she feels like one still, heart Trader always even if her mind understands why she is trangshi).

She is not – she cannot be – so comfortable here with them that she does not mark their approach.

That is how a Trader finds herself in trouble. Daja would do well to remember so.

“I was looking for a place to read.” Tris’s mouth puckers and she clutches her book in front of her like a shield. Daja softens a little at that, even as Tris’s tone makes her want to grind her teeth.

“I’m not in your way.”

“No.” Tris hesitates, gets quieter. “No, you’re not. But I can help.”

Daja watches her a moment, considering. Sandry’s kindness continues to be a welcome surprise, and she likes Briar well enough for a thief boy, but she and Tris are not friends. There is a sharp intelligence to Tris that Daja respects, but it makes her wary, too. (Tris would make any barter more difficult, and a Trader should step softly around her. She notices weaknesses, and does not hesitate.)

At last she nods. Tris sets aside her book on the dry grass, and wipes her hands on her skirt. While she waits, Daja stretches, feeling the pull of well-worked muscles. The ache of smith work is different from the strain of sailing, just as the calluses on her fingers and palms have changed, but no less pleasing.

“I’ll stand here,” Tris says, and goes to stand to the side, just a couple steps in front of Daja, without waiting for her opinion. “Try kicking up again, but not so hard. You are over balancing.”

What good is her advice, when she won’t even try, Daja wonders, but it can’t be any worse than what she’s failed to manage on her own. She takes a deep breath, the air heavy with salt from the ocean and the lush green smell of Rosethorn’s garden, and then throws her hands down, kicking up lightly as she does. She wavers, one leg up, the other dragging through the air, but Tris is right there, her hands steady on Daja’s calf, and after an unsteady second, Daja brings her second leg up as well.

“You’re rolling your shoulders forward,” Tris says, steadying Daja as she wobbles. “It ruins your balance.”

Daja huffs a laugh. Maybe it’s only funny because all the blood is rushing to her head, but she _is_ unbalanced, a topsy-turvy water girl now bound to fire and metal and land. The steadiness, after the roll of the ship, is discomforting.

She drops one leg down again, then the other, pushing up off her hands. Tris steps back, out of the way, giving her room to breathe.

“Again,” Daja says. She focuses this time on making a long line of her body, chin tucked to her chest, hips and shoulders aligned. Tris’s hands are on her legs, and Daja is upright, and then she pulls them away slowly, both at the same time, and still Daja holds it, balanced upside down and strong.

“You did it.” Tris’s voice is low and quiet, but there is no mistaking the pleasure in it. Daja lets her legs fall back and shoves herself upright again, breathing hard and grinning. This time, it is an actual smile, not falsely bared teeth.

_Thank you_ does not come easily to her tongue, so instead she asks, “Do you want to try? I won’t let you fall.”

Tris frowns and is silent. Daja dusts off her hands, bits of grass falling from her fingers, giving her time.

“I’m not very good,” Tris hesitates, then sticks her chin out, stubborn, “at things like this. Not like Briar and Sandry.”

Daja shrugs. “Me neither. Not this. As you know.”

“Okay.” Tris wipes her hands on her skirt again. “I’ll try.”

Daja braces her and braces her and braces her; no matter how many times Tris wobbles and starts to fall, red faced, Daja catches her and pushes her upright again.

*

“Good work!” Lark crows, clapping her hands when the four of them do handstands around her. “Next, I’ll teach you some of my dances.”

Tris looks at Daja and the corner of her mouth turns up, just a little. It’s almost a smile.

*

After the midday meal is done and the dishes cleaned and put away, Daja goes in search of Tris. She finds her sitting under a tree, reading, and for a moment, she just watches. It is very like Tris to go off by herself, and Daja understands that desire.

Still, there are times when she wouldn’t mind company, and maybe it is the same for Tris.

“I’m going for a walk,” Daja says, and grips her staff with both hands. “If you want to come.” 

Tris hesitates, then stands, slips her book into her pocket, and nods. “A walk to the wall would be nice.”

They’re quiet as they walk, the soft, steady thump of Daja’s staff in the dirt marking their path, but it is a good silence, comfortable and easy.


End file.
